


Hidden in plain sight

by mkhhhx



Series: HyungHyuk Bingo S2018 [3]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Dubious Morality, Gen, Good Cop Bad Cop, HyungHyuk Bingo, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Interrogation, Investigations, Minor Character Death, Murder, Prison, Violence, mentions of other members - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 02:16:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15257205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mkhhhx/pseuds/mkhhhx
Summary: “Minhyuk” he calls, “will you help me get out of here, please?”Minhyuk looks at him, feeling his heart shutter, thinking of how they could have met somewhere else, they could be friends instead of meeting in this ugly place. Minhyuk breaks the protocol, laying his open palm on top of Hyungwon’s, squeezing and hoping Hyungwon gets the message.“I will try my best Hyungwon” he whispers, “there’s only so much I can do.”





	Hidden in plain sight

**Author's Note:**

> For the "Prison" square of the HyungHyuk Bingo.
> 
> Declaimer: The story is not based on a real setting and is not depicting S.Korean prisons.

“What about this one?” Kihyun stands in front of the door, his low voice not hiding his strange excitement, eyes gleaming. But Minhyuk has stopped being scared of him long ago.

“Male, 26 years old, accused of murdering his brother last night. He was transferred here a few hours ago.” Minhyuk briefly goes through the information on the paper they got from the police and gives the room keys to Kihyun.

Kihyun unlocks and Minhyuk catches a glimpse of brown hair from inside before the shorter man enters, heavy door shutting with a loud noise echoing in the empty corridor.

He leans on the wall and waits, it never takes long.

Kihyun knows how to break people apart and Minhyuk's job is to keep together what is left of them. They worked well together, Kihyun with harsh words and unforgiving hands, Minhyuk with a soft voice and understanding eyes.

He never thought he would end up like this when he entered the police academy, but life works in strange ways and when he was offered a job in the prison it seemed like a great opportunity.

A few months in and he was doubting his morality and sanity every single day.

He looks at his watch. Kihyun has been quiet for six minutes before Minhyuk can hear noise from inside. Something metallic hitting the floor, shouting, a voice which belongs to the inmate asking for help. But help won’t come and Kihyun will have his way with him, like he does with everyone.

He walks back and forth at the corridor, greets a guard who’s passing by and stands in front of his assigned door again. The rest of the rooms are unoccupied. It’s a rare, quiet period.

Twenty seven minutes have passed when the door opens and Kihyun gets out, eyes wild and hands in tight fists on his sides. He holds the door open and Minhyuk slips in.

It takes him a while to spot the prisoner, even if the room is small and more or less bare, save for the table and the chairs, one of them thrown at a wall, undeniably Kihyun’s doing.

Minhyuk picks that chair up, sets it in front of the table and turns to the mass of a person, curled at the corner of the room.

“Hey” he says softly, the person’s head moving a bit, revealing his red, dump eyes. “I’m Minhyuk, I’m here to talk. You can take a seat.”

Unlike Kihyun, he’s patient, he won’t push, and he’ll stay in there way more. He watches the man slowly getting up, walking to the chair with small steps, eyes on Minhyuk the whole time. He’s tall but skinny, still in the clothes he was arrested in, a black long sleeved shirt and gray shorts.

Minhyuk keeps a small smile and makes sure to move as little and smoothly as possible and then the man is sitting at the other side of the table, watching Minhyuk expectantly.

“Want to tell me a bit about yourself?” Minhyuk tries, knowing that many times it takes more than one visit for someone to start opening up to him.

The man looks at the wall behind Minhyuk, taps his long fingers on the table and he looks so fragile, a dark bruise already forming on his cheek and who knows how many more Kihyun has caused.

“My name is Chae Hyungwon” it’s all his says and Minhyuk wants to show him with his body language that every word is enough.

“What is your occupation Hyungwon?” Minhyuk already knows, but he needs Hyungwon to warm up to him.

“I’m an elementary school teacher.” It a Wednesday, someone will have to inform Hyungwon’s class that their teacher won’t be coming to school for a few days. Or, way much more.

Minhyuk asks a few more questions. Hyungwon lived alone, but very close to his childhood home. His parents are old, father suffering from Alzheimer’s. He has a cat and his class consists of eighteen children. He knows how to play the piano.

“Do you know why you are here?” Minhyuk starts asking the vital questions and Hyungwon’s face doesn’t change a bit, but he’s breathing heavily.

“I’m accused of killing my brother.”

“Did you?”

“No, I didn’t kill him.”

“Who did it then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your mother found you at the crime scene, why were you there.”

“I often visit my parents’ house, they need help with a lot of things. I was the first to find my brother.” The report says there was a kitchen knife next to the dead body. Minhyuk decides not to ask about it yet.

“Didn’t your brother help around? He was still living with your parents, right.”

“Right, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

“One last question. Who you think could have done it?”

For the first time Hyungwon looks angry.

“Lots of people. Whoever it was, they should have done it a lot of time ago.”

Minhyuk freezes with the change in the atmosphere, the scared man in front of him suddenly visibly turning cold. He nods and gets up. He promised one last question and he’s gonna stick with it.

“I’m gonna leave now, a guard is gonna take you to your cell soon.”

Hyungwon doesn’t say anything and Minhyuk gets out of the room, locking it.

Kihyun is waiting, smoking and looking at his phone.

“How did it go?” he asks, putting the device back in his uniform pocket.

“Could have been worse” Minhyuk answers, “now we wait.”

 

Minhyuk knows the protocol by heart now. A guard will take the inmate, give him clothes and guide him to his room. If he’s lucky enough, a roommate will explain how meal and free times work. If not, Hyungwon will have to figure it out himself.

Meanwhile, Minhyuk and Kihyun will be waiting for the official report from the crime scene, including interviews and forensic information. If Hyungwon still seems to be the basic defendant, they will keep interrogating him. Until the trial, or until Hyungwon admits he’s the one who did it.

 

Day two of interrogating Chae Hyungwon and the forensic and police reports come in before eight in the morning. Kihyun and Minhyuk take a look of them over their cups of coffee, sharing the printed papers, the office starting to buzz with life. Guards, officers, doctors, psychologists. The prison was a small world of its own.

There were four interviews, one from Hyungwon’s mother, his father’s which didn’t really make much sense at all, one from a neighbor lady of the parents who was one of the first people to hear the commotion and the last one from the headmaster of the school Hyungwon worked at.

Minhyuk started with the mother. She described the night of the murder the best she could. They were watching television with her husband after dinner when she heard her younger son scream from the garage. She rushed to see what was going on and found Hyungwon at the same room with his brother’s dead body, attacked by a kitchen knife multiple times on his front. She started screaming until her husband arrived and they called the police. A couple of neighbors were already in front of the house too. She also told the police that Hyungwon always seemed to be jealous of his brother, who still lived with his parents, but was never violent or aggressive before. When asked if she truly believes he could kill his brother and what were the motives, she refused to answer.

Father can barely talk and the report consists of incoherent and disconnected sentences. He seems like he’s trying to say that his son is no murdered and hasn’t really understood what’s going on. Minhyuk imagines a scared old man, the police in his house and both his sons missing, his wife a wreck. He feels sorry for them, but then looks at Kihyun’s stone cold expression and moves on.

The neighbor lady doesn’t have anything vital to add, although he knows he must be cautious with every little thing. His job is to interrogate and nothing else, but there were many times they found clues and helped clear up other cases in the past. He and Kihyun both have sharp eyes and good critical skills. He goes through the text about the quiet neighborhood and the great family the Chaes were and their sons growing up with everything they wanted.

Last is the headmaster of the small elementary school with a total of ten different teachers. Hyungwon had been working there for the past three years, ever since he finished university and there were barely any complains about him. His students were well behaved and seemed to love their teacher, the parents also having good communication with him. “He was a really quiet man” the headmaster says, “he never talked about his personal life or family, we barely knew anything he did outside the school grounds, but of course he had every right to keep it to himself.” Minhyuk keeps reading and the officer asks “Do you think he could kill his brother.” And the man answers, “No, no I don’t think he could. He’s a kind soul.”

“What do you think?” Kihyun lifts his eyes from his own papers expectantly.

“I have no idea, it’s messy. It seems like he’s not the kind of person who could kill someone, but there are many questions, we know almost nothing about his personal life, so…”

“So.” Kihyun agrees.

There have been many people before Hyungwon. So many weak, quiet, peaceful people who had become murderers for one reason or another. Minhyuk has worked on many cases, seen men and women who at this point could barely be called humans crying and hitting the walls and begging for mercy right after admitting they were the ones who did it. That’s were Minhyuk and Kihyun’s work was over. The rest of the story would be played out in the court.

Kihyun hands him over the forensics reports. He knows they will have more interviews soon, the crime agitating the small society of their town, the television playing the same few snippets of Hyungwon’s mother and the police officers again and again, presenting Hyungwon like some kind of monster. Everyone seems to believe he’s the one who did it, but Minhyuk holds back in something that feels like hope. Even to a trained policeman, Hyungwon seems innocent, caught up in something bigger he cannot get out of.

The first piece of information is that the court hearing is scheduled in seven days, not too long, but neither too short. The second is, that the weapon of the murder, the knife, only had genetic material from the family members and nobody else, just like the whole room, with the exception of the car, that was used by the mother and also the son and his friends, so it was to be expected.

But there’s something weird. The necropsy of the dead body showed traces of various drugs. Weed, cocaine, heroin. Minhyuk looks over the numbers, the amounts and it’s obvious that the person was a drug addict, they were way too high. For the first time in twenty four hours, he realizes that there’s something bigger hidden within the case. The Chae family mustn’t have been as nice as they wanted the outsiders to believe.

“Will you go fetch him from his cell? Take him to our other room. He doesn’t look like he could run away.” Kihyun is smiling, like a druggie waiting for his fix. Their “other room” is an underground space. As much as the inmates scream and beg there, nobody will hear them. And Kihyun doesn’t have mercy or empathy for the prisoners.

Minhyuk remembers of the last time they went there. Kihyun only uses it for murderers, paedophiles, abusers of the worst kind. He almost killed a man a month ago and he would have done it if Minhyuk didn’t step in and stopped him from drowning the man in a basin filled with scorching dirty water. Kihyun eventually calmed down, the man was locked back to his cell and there was a kind of awkwardness between them.

“You were about to kill him.” Minhyuk had said.

“I wanted to.” Kihyun had answered and they didn’t talk about it again.

 

Minhyuk asks for Hyungwon’s cell number, the prison as familiar as the back of his palm. He heads there, many inmates recognising him, trying to start conversation, hanging from the iron bars and begging him for something, mostly cigarettes, or a phone call to their girlfriends, lawyers, kids.

He finds the room, identical to all others, dirty walls and a tiny window letting in some rays of sunshine. Minhyuk knows Hyungwon’s roommate, Changkyun. He’s in for murder too, his third of ten years total, sentence reduced because he was underage at the time of his hearing, currently on his bunk bed reading something. He barely lifts his eyes to acknowledge Minhyuk unlocking the door.

It takes some more time to find Hyungwon, Minhyuk scanning the small space for the thin man, who’s on his bed too, the lower one, sitting at the far end with his back on the wall. He doesn’t look like he appreciates Minhyuk’s presence, hiding his head between his legs, making himself as small as possible. But whatever he does, Minhyuk has to take him out.

He is patient, knowing Kihyun is already downstairs, getting ready to stain his hands and clothes with blood. Minhyuk tells Hyungwon they are gonna interview him today too, takes him out of the cell slowly, putting handcuffs around his bony wrists.

“Where are we going?” Hyungwon mutters, slurring around the words like he is just waking up, “Am I gonna see my lawyer? I want to see him.”

“You are going to see him soon, I promise.” Minhyuk doesn’t know when and if a lawyer is coming for Hyungwon, but there’s a good chance he won’t remember the conversation.

They descend the stairs together, the place lit by white harsh lights, each step echoing around and Minhyuk remembers the first time he entered this part of the prison. He felt chills running down his spine, faint screams could be heard from the other rooms and chains chackling. Just like a real life thriller setting.

In their small town, the law about prisoners being handled in humane ways didn’t matter, nobody has cared so far and people like Kihyun could fulfil their sick desires. They were only a handful, the ones who found joy in torturing, but they were enough, making the prison infamous all around the area.

They reached the underground floor, Minhyuk walking next and a couple steps behind Hyungwon, leading him to the last room. A scream cut the silence and Hyungwon froze, turned his head back to Minhyuk shaking it.

“Please, please no” he begged, unmoving “I didn’t do it, I…”

Minhyuk pushes him forward, lets his hand flat on Hyungwon’s back a little more than necessary. A small act of comfort, at least in his own mind.

He opens the door, left unlocked and Kihyun is sitting on a chair inside, two more strategically placed around a table.

“Good morning” Kihyun grins, hands together on his lap and Hyungwon once again slows down, but doesn’t stop this time. Maybe he thinks that by behaving will somehow gain Kihyun’s mercy, but nobody has managed that, so far.

Minhyuk pushes him towards a chair and sits on the last one, maintaining a good distance from the other two men.

The scene he has seen so many times before doesn’t take long to unfold.

Kihyun asks questions, but has very limited patience. Hyungwon is stressed, taking more and more time to answer, even the simplest of things. It doesn’t take long for Kihyun to lose it and Minhyuk knows it a few seconds before it happens, Kihyun’s nose scrunching up in disgust, eyebrows furrowed tightly together and Minhyuk braces himself.

Kihyun is a small man, but something about him is intimidating, a strong aura he carries around him and Minhyuk couldn’t explain it any other way. Even when Kihyun is relaxed, the feeling of being threatened is there, the feeling that Kihyun could snap any moment and start shouting, punching. It gets even worse when they don’t have many inmates.

But now Kihyun is in front of Hyungwon and he’s lifting him by the collar of his prison uniform, he’s shouting, punching Hyungwon once, twice, Minhyuk looks away and blocks out the noise, thinks of anything else, but can’t miss the way Hyungwon’s lifeless body, with no fight left in him is dragged on the floor, to the other end of the room.

Minhyuk looks. Hyungwon is trashing around, limbs trying to get away, Kihyun keeping him on the floor, in front of his bowls.

“Did you fucking kill your brother, you fucking piece of shit?” Kihyun asks, not expecting an answer, pushing Hyungwon’s face in the boiling water, counting to twenty and letting him breathe. Then it’s ice, one more breath and the circle resumes and Hyungwon is crying, water dripping down his hair as he’s muttering that no, he didn’t, he didn’t kill his brother.

It goes on for long and Minhyuk doesn’t bother keeping the time. He has seen Kihyun knocking down literal beasts, men four times his size crying and begging and bleeding. Hyungwon passes out soon on the floor, in a small pool of water and his own blood. Nothing fatal, Kihyun wouldn’t risk losing his job again, because there’s that much the administration can deal with and ignore.

“I’m done here.” Kihyun says, throwing the room keys to Minhyuk. “He’s no fun.” He adds, exiting and Minhyuk is alone with Hyungwon again, some noise coming from the next room, but it’s easy to ignore. He looks at his watch and estimates the time it’ll take for Hyungwon to wake up, takes his phone out and looks at his emails, reading the forensics report again. He has questions for Hyungwon.

Approximately half an hour after Kihyun has left, there’s a groan, a small motion, Hyungwon trying to move his legs first, then his arms, his head. He crawls and sits on the floor, looking confused, probably trying to remember what happened before he blacked out. He looks at Minhyuk and pulls his legs up to his chest, a futile attempt to protect himself from whatever harm there could be.

“Do you want to come sit with me?” Minhyuk asks, as softly as he can. Hyungwon shakes his head, tries to go further away, but there isn’t any more space.

When Minhyuk entered the police academy and then started getting training for working in the prison, the theory seemed simple and functional with the good and the bad cop technique. Scare them, make them feel vulnerable, crack them open and obtain the needed information. All he sees now is a man who maybe doesn’t even hold any information.

Why would Chae Hyungwon lie? If he isn’t, why would he kill his brother in his parents’ own house? Why, why, why? The thoughts swim in Minhyuk’s head like stray boats in a storm, Hyungwon looking at him in terror.

“I’m not gonna hurt you” Minhyuk tries again, “can I come and help you get on a chair?” There’s no reaction, Hyungwon unmoving except the fall and rise of his chest. Minhyuk gets up, approaches him and helps him stand up, legs not quite working, the man shaking in Minhyuk’s hold and he knows well that if they are not careful he could die of hypothermia. Like many before him.

“I am innocent.” Hyungwon simply says, allowing himself to put all of his upper body weight on the table between them, “but if you want to kill me, just do it already.”

“We’re not trying to kill you” Minhyuk answers, trying to think what the first question would be.

“Then why do you let him do that to me?” Hyungwon’s voice is suddenly steadier, less afraid and Minhyuk is at a loss of words. Because even he knows there’s not any good reason for Kihyun’s behaviour, it’s way too violent even for the prison. So Minhyuk asks the first question.

“Do you want to see your parents?” It’s the first people prisoners usually ask for.

“No. Only my lawyer.” Hyungwon’s eyes are cold, unfocused, but he seems to be able to think and answer clearly.

“Why not your parents?” Minhyuk pushes, “they both said you could have never done it, they love you a lot.” At least his father. The mother remains an enigma.

“They are the ones who called the police, gave me away like this.”

“It’s natural in times of panic. Even if they didn’t, the police would have taken you away, you should know that.” Minhyuk takes a deep breath, “Hyungwon, all evidence points towards accusing you and you are not giving me any information as to why it isn’t you. Why should I believe you just like this?”

Hyungwon rubs his hands together, the handcuffs already cutting his wrists, creating small bloody scratches.

“What’s your name?” Is all Hyungwon says.

“I’m Minhyuk” and it’s against their policy and their training, but he can’t stop thinking that Hyungwon is really innocent, that he doesn’t deserve any of this. He’s a clever and educated man, he left all of his life behind, standing in a dingy room, with a swollen face and tied hands. He deserves someone to trust at least.

“Minhyuk, I have nothing else to say, because I’m innocent. I didn’t do it. I heard my brother scream from the garage and run to help him, thought he somehow injured himself while working on his motorcycle. I found him dead and a few moments later my mother came too. You know the rest of the story.”

“Hyungwon, do you know what the necropsy found out?” Minhyuk takes the actual paper, folded inside his pocket and shows it to Hyungwon.

“What does that mean?” He lifts his eyes to Minhyuk, getting teary eyes, struggling while he’s trying to read.

“It’s pretty obvious that he was a drug user, didn’t you know?”

“I knew. I just knew he did stuff, not the details.”

“Is that because you didn’t care?” Minhyuk tucks the paper back into his pocket, Kihyun might be already reading the newest ones.

“We didn’t talk much and I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t interested into my brother’s life.”

“You sound like you didn’t have a good relationship.” That much is obvious, but still not enough to provide murder accusations. But a first step to something, something that could make things a bit clearer.

“No, we didn’t. He chose his own path and I chose mine.”

“You live in your own house and you had to go to work the next day. Why were you at your parents’ place so late in the night?” The reports state that the police was called a bit after midnight.

“My parents have limited mobility, I stayed for dinner, watched some television with them and decided to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen before leaving. I didn’t pay attention to the time.”

“And your brother was working on his motorcycle so late?”

“He had strange sleep patterns.”

“Is the kitchen close to the garage?” Of course, Minhyuk already has photos of the house. He’s trying to make Hyungwon stumble on his words, make some kind of mistake. Or maybe he hopes he doesn’t. Hopes the week passes fast and Hyungwon can return to some kind of normal life again.

“They are both on the ground floor, next to each other. The back door of the kitchen leads to the garage.”

“And what about the living room, where your parents were?”

“It’s at the other side of the house.”

Minhyuk nods, writes some of the answers down and asks some more, about the house, Hyungwon’s job, his one and only hobby –playing piano-. He sounds like a lonely person, uninteresting, dull. But he says again and again how he loves his class, his kids and his expression is genuine. Minhyuk is trained well to recognise when people are lying or not.

Hyungwon is shaking from the cold and falling asleep and Minhyuk knows he can’t get more out of him. He helps him on his feet, considers just guiding him back to his cell and letting him deal with the sickness himself, but he knows he’ll feel guilty later. He ends up leaving a semi-conscious Hyungwon at the nursery, shrugging Kihyun off when he asks if Hyungwon said anything valuable later.

 

Minhyuk is in the waiting room with Hyungwon when his lawyer finally comes, the next morning. The room is full of inmates talking with family, friends, or lawyers and Hyungwon is anxiously waiting for his own. He has gotten sick, eyes bloodshot and nose red, face a mess of black and blues. He doesn’t look at Minhyuk, doesn’t try to talk even when they are sitting side to side.

“Chae Hyungwon at seat 3” The mechanic voice announces from the speakers and Hyungwon takes some steps towards there. There’s a man in a suit at the other side of the glass, sitting down and smiling at Hyungwon softly. They have twenty minutes to talk and Hyungwon goes to the visiting room guard, Hyunwoo, who’s sitting in his little separated office, door always open.

“Poor thing” Hyunwoo exhales the moment Minhyuk steps in, taking a sip of his cheap cafeteria coffee.

“Who?” Minhyuk takes a seat, looks around Hyunwoo’s office for anything remotely interesting that is not work papers to occupy himself.

“That Hyungwon guy, I know his lawyer, Shin Hoseok.”

“Who’s that?” Minhyuk rarely ever cares about inmates once they are out of prison, he doesn’t know much about how courts really work, apart from the basics.

“You know, he works for some kind of organisation. If the prisoner and his family don’t have money to hire a professional, that organisation provides. Most of their lawyers are barely trained though.”

Minhyuk looks at the pair kept apart by the glass once again, the lawyer explaining something, his hands moving as he talks and Hyungwon leaning in as close as he can, listening.

His family seemed well off, and despite Hyungwon probably not making too much money as an elementary teacher, Minhyuk thought his parents would support and try to help him with the bare minimum. A good lawyer. Minhyuk drinks some of Hyunwoo’s watery coffee, skips through the church calendar he has on his desk, until Hyungwon’s time runs out and he’s called back.

Minhyuk is waiting for him at the door to take him back to his cell and Hyungwon looks too close to crying. Minhyuk wants to ask him what’s wrong, maybe even touch him reassuringly, although he doesn’t know just how bad the situation is. His lawyer must have said something along the lines of not having enough evidence that he’s innocent. He leaves Hyungwon in his cell, takes a look at Changkyun scribbling down something on an old notebook on his desk and he returns to his office.

Kihyun, as expected, is already there, typing on his computer, wordlessly giving Minhyuk a pile of papers, more reports from Hyungwon’s case and some concerning other inmates. This time it’s photos of the brother’s room, some of his personal belongings and interviews of his friends, which seems to be a few.

The room is nothing special, a small and clean space in his parents’ house, probably the room he was occupying his whole life. There are a lot of videogames, some university books and then, little plastic sealed bags containing different kinds of drugs, about ten of them. The policemen working on it give a descriptive report of his friends, few and shady, mostly known young drug users around the area.

“He was a nice guy, he always paid his fix on time” one of them tells the police, “he never had problems with the big guy” the second one adds, “he was trying to cut it off lately, we all do” the first chimed in again. Minhyuk goes through the whole thing, the two friends, some more neighbours, an aunt, the brother’s classmates. They hardly have something to say about Hyungwon except “he was always really quiet”. Minhyuk is even more confused, but it seems like the murder has something to do with the drug addiction. It’s the only good enough of a reason.

“Seems like your favourite guy won’t make it out of here.” Kihyun comments, shutting his laptop.

“I don’t have any favourite guys.” Minhyuk tries to defend himself and notes that he has to be more careful when approaching Hyungwon, at least in front of Kihyun.

“We’re interrogating him tomorrow too, and maybe the days after that, until he gives us something, anything. The media are going crazy over the story.”

Minhyuk nods. He hasn’t opened the television in days, knowing what was waiting for him. A description of Hyungwon as a cold blooded murderer, shots of his mother crying, tear jerking descriptions of his father’s condition. The locals need someone to channel their anger too, someone to blame and Hyungwon is just perfect, guilty or not.

Later the same day a new guys comes in, an older man for domestic violence. The police stepped in moments before he strangled his wife to death, their daughter watching. There’s not much for Minhyuk to do, the accusations this time are clear as a day and Kihyun tells Minhyuk to stay back, that he doesn’t need him. Kihyun takes the guy underground and when he’s thrown back to his cell, he barely looks like a human, sitting on the floor and crying, with nobody to help him. All of the prisoners committed crimes, but some are still proud and above miserable excuses of people like him.

 

Minhyuk knows very little about Kihyun, the only piece of information that he had a tough childhood, family estranged when growing up. Despite that, he was one of the top students of the police academy, asking to be placed in the prison right after graduation. Inflicting pain on others who, for him, deserved it, was his way of coping, too proud to ask for any other kind of help he so surely needs.

Minhyuk was scared of him when they first started working together, that aura of aggressiveness, his sudden outbursts with the inmates, his smiles when people crawled on the floor leaving trails of blood trying to escape his hold but having nowhere to go. But Kihyun never once hurt any of his co-workers, sharp tongued but well-mannered and ultimately good at his job. Minhyuk learned to trust him and his ways, stepping down to doing only his own part instead of criticising Kihyun’s and the administration turned a blind eye to everything, as long as they had results.

 

“Do you think he’s say anything useful or are we just wasting our time?” Kihyun asks, just before they are about to leave the office in the afternoon.

“I don’t know.” Minhyuk shakes his head, but really, he hope Hyungwon doesn’t have anything useful to tell them.

There is some progress the next two days, Kihyun turning more and more uninterested in Hyungwon, because he’s weak like a stick, ready to physically break anytime. He stops crying and begging, letting Kihyun kick and punch and slap him. Kihyun gets bored easily, lets him with Minhyuk and goes away, probably to find someone more pain tolerant.

 

“You know” Hyungwon’s mouth is a mess, dried blood mixed with fresh one all around it, Kihyun has just left and Hyungwon hasn’t blacked out, “my parents don’t love me. They never did.”

Minhyuk leans back on his uncomfortable chair, takes a look at the voice recorder between them.

“Why do you say that?” he asks and Hyungwon places his hands on the table, skinny, tendons stretching in unnatural ways every time he moves his fingers, trying to get comfortable in the handcuffs.

“They liked my brother more, I never fully understood why. I was the better student out of the two, but he was the happiest one, always smiling, cooking with my mother, going for fishing with my father. I rarely ever left my room, maybe that’s why.”

“Why didn’t you chose to live somewhere further away then, what was your relationship like the past few years?” Minhyuk has to be careful with every word, Hyungwon looking more open to talk. He doesn’t want to scare him again.

“I couldn’t leave them alone. My father refused to go to a retirement home and my brother’s health was deteriorating over time. I’m sure mother knew about his addiction, but thought it was one of his phases, as long as he was pleasant around her. After I finished college I moved back into their neighbourhood, close to them to help out around the house.”

Minhyuk doesn’t want to take his notebook out and start writing down, it might be weird for Hyungwon and the recorder is more than enough.

“Tell me more, anything you want.”

So Hyungwon speaks, lets Minhyuk inside a part of his mind, talking about some childhood memories, his teenage years, his college life. He was always quiet, found solace between his books, his parents always away for work when he was younger and he had to take care of himself. By the time his brother was born, they were close to retirement and had all the time to spend with their kids, but Hyungwon was already distant. Naturally, they couldn’t hide their preference for their younger son, always happy, a bit of a troublemaker but eager for every family activity they planned.

His teenage years weren’t much different, with little friends and more studying.

“I thought that studying hard would get me into any university I wanted, it would be my way out once and for all. I was right, until I took pity on my family’s condition and decided to return.” Hyungwon says, before he describes a series of incidents, being bullied at school, for being too quiet, too good, wearing glasses, being skinny. He was the perfect victim, never fighting back, sitting quietly on his chair and waiting for it to pass, every day for years.

“College was better, I worked full time at nights to support myself, I never asked for anything from my parents while my brother was spending all of their money on booze and dates and his motorcycles through high school. When he graduated he didn’t go to college, doing whatever he could left and right around the town. Our parents didn’t care.”

Minhyuk listens to every single word, even when Hyungwon starts getting too tired, forgetting to finish the sentences he started, stuttering and jumping from one memory to the other, most just dull incidents but Minhyuk figures it out. Hyungwon is jealous of his brother, maybe deep down wished he could have the same attention from his parents, craved it but didn’t know how to seek for it and for once, he has someone to listen, until he runs out of words.

“It’s time to get you back to your cell Hyungwon” Minhyuk smiles, Hyungwon falling asleep on his chair but then his eyes are wide open again.

“Minhyuk” he calls, placing his hands at the middle of the table with urgency. “Will you help me get out of here, please?” Minhyuk looks at him, feeling his heart shutter, thinking of how they could have met somewhere else, they could be friends, the elementary teacher and the prison guard, instead of meeting in this ugly place. Minhyuk breaks the protocol, laying his open palm on top of Hyungwon’s, squeezing and hoping Hyungwon gets the message.

“I will try my best Hyungwon.” He whispers, helping him up, “there’s only so much I can do.”

 

The next days, Minhyuk doesn’t see Hyungwon at all. An attempted bank robbery happens in the nearby town and most officers in the same position as him are occupied with interrogations the whole day. Minhyuk works with two of the suspects, one giving out the location of their base in the first ten minutes and the second just shouting for his lawyer until Minhyuk tells him there’s video evidence of him breaking into the bank and even the lawyer cannot get him out immediately at this point.

 

Minhyuk finds himself thinking of Hyungwon more than he should, while driving back from work, laying on his bed with an untouched book in his lap at night. He thinks of Hyungwon smiling, how beautiful it would be, how he might be able to see it one day. Of Hyungwon healthy and strong, walking around a park, teaching his class, leaning to level with the kids and explaining simple math problems patiently.

Minhyuk knows he shouldn’t think of all that, their instructors have warned them, “sometimes, when a suspect opens up, you might feel pity for them, even the need to help. It’s a trap you shouldn’t fall for, you never know if they are in fact the ones manipulating you.”

Minhyuk falls asleep with the thought of a smiling Hyungwon in mind. The next is the day before the court hearing. A part of him hopes to never see Hyungwon after it. Not even out of the prison, because if he’s innocent, how could he ever look at him again?

 

The day starts like every other. Minhyuk wakes up, takes a shower, makes himself eat the minimal breakfast and takes his car to work, tuning in a radio station with only music. The prison is a few miles out of the town, tucked between the mountains, a gray block staining the beauty of nature around it. He parks and heads to the office, spotting some inmates already out at the yard, playing football and laughing.

He gets his coffee while waiting for Kihyun, his mailbox empty of new reports about the case. Only five days passed and it’s already forgotten, the media finding new stories to show, the masses redirecting their suppressed anger elsewhere. Maybe the bank robbery, maybe something else equally as unpleasant.

“Morning” Kihyun shouts to everyone in the office stepping inside, laptop case hanging from his shoulder, a paper cup on his hands. A morning like every other.

“We’re gonna see your friend today, maybe for the last time. There’s nothing much backing him up and at this point it’s much easier for everyone even if he just says he’s the one who did it.” Kihyun informs Minhyuk and he suddenly feels disgusted.

He knows of previous cases like this, investigation going nowhere until the right people are paid. “If you say this and that, you’ll spend only three years in prison and we’ll pay your family every month.” People who have been wrongly accused but had no choice, even more when leaving behind their families. Juries, lawyers, police officers, they are more inclined towards just giving some cash than continuing an investigation that’s gonna make them stay in their offices for longer than necessary.

Minhyuk doesn’t say anything back to Kihyun, waits until they both finish their coffees and then goes to Hyungwon’s cell, Kihyun heading downstairs.

Minhyuk visits the bathroom first, looks at himself in the mirror, his black hair, his dark eyes, the ominous belt with his work gear around his waist, the shiny gun he’s more or less free to use as he seems fit. He has never shot anyone in his life, never inflicted pain without reason and yet, he is a bystander and a mere watcher to everything wrong happening in this damn prison and he, for some seconds, hates everything he is and he represents and works for.

He throws some water on his face and steps out to the cells, like nothing has happened, his intact persona well-kept in front of the prisoners.

This time, Hyungwon is talking with Changkyun, both on the lower bed, sharing hushed whispers about something Minhyuk doesn’t quite catch. When Hyungwon notices him, he gets up and walks to the door, pulls his long sleeves up and waits for the handcuffs Minhyuk puts on him.

On their way they don’t talk and once again, the image of Hyungwon at this time of the day teaching passes through Minhyuk’s mind. Just one more day of patience and everything will be resolved. If the jury doesn’t have enough evidence they can’t sentence Hyungwon. Even if his fingerprints were all over that knife. That knife. Why was there a knife in the garage? Hyungwon was in the kitchen before the murder. Minhyuk tries to make the gears in his mind work faster. Why had nobody yet asked about the knife, or did they? He remembers reading about it in the reports, something about keeping knives among other old tools in the garage. It didn’t make sense but they were already in the same room with Kihyun and Hyungwon had started trembling.

Kihyun knows he cannot fuck Hyungwon up before the hearing, not that much. He screams and kicks and throws Hyungwon on the floor and pushes his face down in the water until Hyungwon is coughing and vomiting what little was in his stomach. Once again Kihyun gets bored easily, disgusted too this time, doesn’t even bother to check if Hyungwon is breathing after his coughing fit when he walks away.

“All yours, although nothing will come out of it.” Kihyun says, hands bloody as he gets out of the room, maybe planning on joining some other, more interesting interrogation going on.

Hyungwon gets up by himself, walks to the usual chair and Minhyuk realises how surrealistic this whole ordeal is, how they made a habit in just a few days.

“What are we talking about today?” Hyungwon asks, giving a small, barely there, smile.

“Why was there a knife in the garage Hyungwon?” Minhyuk asks, almost begs for a good explanation. Nobody keeps knives in their garage.

“It just was there, maybe my brother needed it for something and the murdered used it. You know, this is the plot hole, but I have no explanation. I said I was at the kitchen, when knives normally are, but I could have lied and saved myself saying I was in another room, nobody would check.”

“That would require the murderer to wear gloves Hyungwon, no foreign fingerprints were found on the knife or your brother’s body.”

Hyungwon shrugs, he looks tired and Minhyuk knows there’s nothing else to say.

“We’re done.” He turns the recorder off, the small white sound it did while working dying down.

Minhyuk is ready to get up when he feels hands on his own.

“I need to tell you a secret.” Hyungwon whispers and Minhyuk knows he needs to turn the recorder on, he knows what he’s gonna do is illegal for both sides, that he’s gonna get in trouble for the smallest of things if someone finds them out talking like this, or looks through the security camera. Yet, he nods for Hyungwon to speak.

“That night” Hyungwon’s voice breaks, like it’s physically difficult for him to speak and maybe it really is, “my brother stole my money from my wallet, my parents wouldn’t give him more for his fix, my mother was slowly understanding where he spend his money and how dangerous it was becoming.”

“Okay.” Minhyuk tries to calm himself down, heart beating fast, Hyungwon’s hands heavy on his own.

“I asked for my money back and he didn’t even deny he took them, he was under the influence of something. He became aggressive and we started fighting, the television loud enough for our parents not to hear.” Hyungwon is looking into Minhyuk’s eyes, then once around the room before he continues. “He was aggressive, he grabbed my shirt and tried to, I don’t know what he was trying, to hit me in some way. I was scared.”

“Hyungwon, what…what are you trying to say?” Minhyuk is terrified. He has a feeling of what will follow.

“I was still holding the knife I had just washed, I heard him as he was about to leave with his motorcycle and my money and I went to take them back, I needed the money. That’s when he became aggressive.”

“You killed him.” Minhyuk says, gulps down, hands unmoving.

“I killed him.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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